


Exspectantes

by The_Readers_Muse



Series: Carpe Noctem [2]
Category: Queen of the Damned (2002), Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Adult Content, Allusions made to mind/memory sharing between maker and childe, M/M, Slash, Soul Bond, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-14 05:18:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2179389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Readers_Muse/pseuds/The_Readers_Muse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was wandering through the university district when a familiar scent – fresh dryer sheets and dusty papers – drifted through the air above him. His head lolled, the action bordering on self-indulgent as he scented the dredges of it. Unmistakeable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own either the game or movie rights to Queen of the Damned, or the books they were based on, wishful thinking aside.
> 
> Authors Note #1: This is a ‘after the movie’ fic, meant to fit in a few weeks/months after the credits rolled. I have never read the books that this movie was loosely based on, so the only source material that applies in the case of this fic is in regards to the movie. * This ficlet is meant to loosely fit into the aftermath of my other Marius/David fic, “Emergere,” so consider this a sequel of sorts. This is told completely in Lestat’s point of view.
> 
> Warnings: Major spoilers for the movie, allusions to ‘mental sharing’ between sire and childe, language, references to blood drinking, Marius being a cheeky little shit, Lestat being Lestat, references to soul-mates/soul bonds and allusions to mild sexual content.

He was wandering through the university district when a familiar scent – fresh dryer sheets and dusty papers – drifted through the air above him. His head lolled, the action bordering on self-indulgent as he scented the dredges of it.  _Unmistakable._

His lips turned upwards, grin wicked as he imagined a hunt – _a game_. If Jesse were here, she might even allow herself to play. The human wouldn’t have to know. They would be less than a whisper, a momentary blur at the edges of the historian’s already limited vision.

His fangs lengthened, shivering slightly as they dropped out of their sheaths.

She’d scold him for it later, no doubt. Call him wicked and punish him for his teasing.

But in the end, he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist.

After all, the hunt was so much more satisfying when the prey knew enough to be afraid.

* * *

 

He ghosted down an alley, leaping over a fence and alighting on the deck of a vacant dorm room just in time to see Jesse’s former mentor come hurrying down the narrow street.

And for the second time in so many minutes, he found the corners of his lips tugging upwards without his consent. He cocked his head, long fingers weaving between the slats in the wrought-iron. It wasn’t that he found the man amusing. _No._ It was something else.

_Fondness, perhaps?_

_No-_

He shook the troublesome thought away, dismissing it summarily as the human navigated around a corner, his tall frame lending an awkward, unconscious sort of grace to his movements. He was dressed in the same unremarkable attire. A plain dress shirt, a worn pair of high-end slacks, a thin brown suede jacket and his customary glasses - nothing out of the ordinary and certainly nothing unique enough to capture his interest.

Still, there was something different. Something he was missing. Something in the man’s bearing that enticed a second look. His fangs teased across the plush of his upper lip. Something in the way he carried himself. In the way he allowed most of the foot-traffic to blend around him rather than skirt out of the way. He owned his steps.

He inhaled reflexively. _Confidence._ It was something the man had been sorely lacking during their last encounter.

Now _that_ was interesting.

* * *

He stalked his prey from the rooftops, keeping pace from above. And perhaps for the first time, he allowed himself to take the human’s measure. He’d been amused by the historian that night in his office, sensing his fear and concern, his longing and the firmness of a decision he’d made long ago.

_Such a contradictory creature._

Jesse had talked of him at length in the months after Akasha had been defeated. And while he hadn’t always been listening, he’d enjoyed the cadence of her voice, how it rippled and changed when she put his name to voice. Their history together was unmistakable.

He sailed easily over a gap in the buildings, feather-light and poised as the man weaved in and out of the late night crowd. They were mostly young things heading out into the night, their cravings – drink, drugs, sex – all but written on their skin, eager to whet their appetites as the work-week crept to a close.

His type, as Jesse would say.

He tossed his head back; eyes fast to the waxing moon.

The anticipation of the crowd was almost too much.

It reminded him of why he was there in the first place.

 _It was a banquet,_ _a feast._

But when the man’s scent - warm and uniquely soothing - rose above the fray once more, he shook his head.

* * *

In a vague, disinterested sort of way he was aware that the man’s scent had changed. For what had once been dust and dryer lint was now an explosion of sensation, a stupor of euphoria he seemed to be experiencing second hand every time he breathed in the man’s scent.

It had shades now. Complexities and layers he’d somehow missed the first time around. He knew it intimately. He knew it as if he’d tasted it himself, as if he’d tapped a vein and endeavored to savor him. It was fulfilling, invigorating and reassuring in a way he didn’t realize he’d even been-

He reared back, caught off guard when he realized the man had stilled in the middle of the road. He took a step back, eyes glinting in the darkness as he allowed the shadows to swallow him. The Talamascan’s broad shoulders were caught in a severe, demanding line, bunched around the collar – hackles rising.

_Did he know?_

_Did he sense him?_

_Impossible!_

He was an intrusive thought, nothing more. That much he knew from experience. A fettered ghost of a feeling that seeped into the hind brain and sought to awaken instincts long since gone dormant. He was the hair that prickled across the nape, the involuntary shiver, the surge of adrenaline that turned the blood tart with that delicious, age-old undertone of fear.

He still remembered the night Marius had taken him. There had been a sudden fission of awareness, a shiver of warning that had put ill-ease and uncertainty into his steps as he paused at the gates of his father’s house.

He’d known something was wrong, something pervasive and dark that had piqued his old world fears, but he hadn’t been able to put the feeling to voice. The reasoning had been out of his reach. All he knew was that it’d been enough to overcome the warm rush of wine curling in his veins, but not enough to hasten him back inside. Not that it would have mattered. Marius had never been one to deny himself anything. That was one trait they’d always had in common, father to son.

Still, Talbot’s awareness, however faint, intrigued him.

* * *

He inhaled, deliberate and over-indulgent as he remained in the shadow of the overhang - unwilling to show himself until he had a better understanding of what was unfolding around him.

The points of his nails scraped across the brick facade as his nostrils flared, surprised in spite of himself. There was no trace of fear, nothing to suspect the man had noticed his presence at all. But it was all an illusion, carefully crafted and immaculate, in a way that spoke volumes of the man’s potential. Because as the man turned, moving to continue down the street, the barest hint of a smirk unfurled, lighting up his features with that of mirth and unabashed pleasure.

His eyebrows rose.

_That smile was not meant for him._

_But if not him, then who?_

He watched with interest as the performance ended with a shallow, yet respectful nod. As if the historian was acknowledging the presence of a superior predator, but rather than deferring, sought to add color of his own to the game.

It more than a concession.

More than an affirmation.

_It was a challenge._

_An invitation to play._

Disquiet stole about his shoulders like a cloak.


	2. Chapter 2

He watched, silent and still as the historian continued down the road, keeping a confident, easy pace along the sidewalk as the dorms gave way to up-scale offices and private libraries. _Talamascan territory._

The man turned a corner, letting the stretch of his inner palm rasp across the brick as he went. He hissed, saliva pooling before he gave in and swallowed, breathing it in as the scent of the man rose, thick and sweet in the closing space.

He’d been wrong – _misguided_ – this wasn’t a hunt.

_It was a flirtation._

He took the next three rooftops at a needless run, broaching the gap with a speed the human could never hope to equal until he’d pulled ahead. Faces flashed, heady blurs of color and sound as he passed lighted windows and dark rooms. There was laughter on the streets, excitement, a couple moving together in a shadowed corner – moaning. He ignored them.

He stopped suddenly, alighting on top of the roof of a museum. He skirted the edges of its glass dome, looking down at his quarry from above. His lips pulled back, fangs glinting in the moonlight. Not entirely sure what to do with the shiver of pleasure that resulted when he realized the man had taken the bait – heading towards the point where the alley narrowed less than half a block from where he stood.

_The perfect killing ground._

Once again, confusion rose momentarily above the haze of anticipation warring for space in his conscious mind. He felt full – overwhelmed. He didn’t even realize he’d been herding him. _Wanting him_. He closed his eyes, trying unsuccessfully to center himself. He was uncertain of where this sudden attachment – this obsession - had risen, but found himself too invested to question it any further.

_He wanted to know what had incited this change._

_Why the man was suddenly so-_

The muscles in his thighs flexed, on point as the man paused at the opening of the alleyway. Pride rippled through him. _Oh, he knew. His David was too smart for that._

He watched the man’s lips quirk upwards. There was a predatory awareness in the movement as the historian’s hand came up, lingering – blasphemous and sensual – across the side of the building before he turned away, heading back the way he’d come with the same, calm unhurried gait.

And for a split second he pictured the man as a fledging, freshly turned. He’d be beautiful, of course, what with his hair curling around his nape, his coltish build filling out, strengthening muscles that his line of work had brought to the point of atrophy. His strong Roman nose would be bereft of his customary glasses, lending credence to the bold line of his brow and the subtle brilliance of his eyes.

His fingers twitched at his sides, caressing the edge of a phantom brush, yearning to put the image to canvas while it was still fresh. He would enjoy the unveiling just as much as he would the hedging bashfulness of its host. It would be a challenge, he knew, just to convince the man to sit for him, one he looked forward to with relish. He could already see the colors melding across his palette, a mixture of tan and pale pink, of auburn-chestnut and gentle shades of delicate, rose-petal crimson.

David blushed so beautifully, after all.

_An unexpected beauty._

_Demure and irresistible._

He made a brutal fist as uncertainty reigned, roiling in his gut like the wine sickness that had so often plagued him in his mortality. Those were not his thoughts. He had no love for Talbot save for what lingering scraps of mortal emotion Jesse still bore for him. Then why-

Realization struck the same moment the air around him shifted.

“Marius,” he breathed.

“Quite right, Lestat,” a honeyed voice behind him agreed.

He nearly fell off the roof in his shock.


	3. Chapter 3

“Good evening, Lestat,” Marius hummed, coming to join him at the edge, hands posed behind his back, resplendent in tailored black slacks and a silk coat of finely cut maroon.

He shook his head. And Marius said _he_ had a flair for the dramatic?

It took more effort than it should have to force himself to calm. If he still had a heartbeat he knew it would be pounding clear out of his chest.  Marius knew, of course. It was only his maker, after all, that could catch him so off guard. That could make him feel like a child, freshly turned and overeager by saying less than a word.

“You are following him, why?”

“I could ask you the same,” Marius answered, gaze firm on Talbot’s retreating back as the human cut a path down the dirty sidewalk. He swallowed, uncertain, as Marius visibly inhaled, tasting the air with clear interest as the historian’s scent rose in the muggy city air. The scene felt strangely intimate. Like he was intruding on something he didn’t quite understand.

“I could feel him, taste him, like I’d had him myself, and yet-” he admitted, trailing off when he realized how impossible it sounded. How it couldn’t possibly be-

“You know different?” Marius offered playfully, having the gall to look delighted by his discomfort as he straightened his cuffs, fangs teasing against his lower lip like a child holding onto a secret.

His eyes narrowed, trying to gain enlightenment from the words themselves when it became clear that his maker was enjoying himself. The question at the end seemed tagged on almost carelessly, off-hand and insincere, like it was more for his benefit than anything else.

There was something he was missing. Marius and Talbot, it was all connected somehow.

He frowned, seizing the feeling by the coat-tails as he weaved the picture together in his mind’s eye. He was missing something. That itch of awareness that’d troubled him from the beginning – from the moment he’d first caught the man’s scent amongst the mid-night crowds.

His eyes flew open, wide in a way that made him uncertain of when he’d first closed them. “You,” he murmured, fangs aching as his throat chased the phantom taste of fresh blood and pleasured cries. “Those feelings, impressions, the sudden obsession with- that was you!”

“Domestic life as made you slow, my son,” Marius teased, gifting him with a small nod before he turned his attention back to the street. “It’s dulled your senses. Perhaps this Jesse has made you soft, hmm?”

“You’re wasting your time, Marius. He won’t take the bite. Jesse already offered. He refused. Something about being too old to live forever,” he snapped, irritated without reason as a pang of something, far too close to jealousy for his liking, arrowed through him.

The man laughed. It was the same dark, throaty sound that had haunted his dreams for centuries.

“I believe that in this distinction, you’ll find that David and I are much alike,” Marius explained, eyes closing with a decadent sigh, evidence enough that he was still following the Talamascan’s scent. An emotion he didn’t recognize rose, thick in his throat, at the display.

“Maturity is an empowering thing, Lestat. Like wine that has aged to a certain perfection, there is something unique about a person who owns their skin. I was older than you when I was made and while the passing of the centuries has erased the number, David reminds me much of myself before I was taken. He has a subdued tenacity, a grounded sort of focus that I find most pleasing.”

He blinked, unable to keep his gaze from wandering back to the man at his side. Marius had never offered even so much as an inch of himself. Even in his infancy, when Marius was his tutor in all things, their relationship had never evolved to the point where the older man had made the effort to discuss his mortal life.

“Why him?”

“I have never been pursued before. It was unexpectedly flattering in a human sort of way, though I certainly didn’t expect it to evolve as it did,” Marius responded, the evasion blatant enough that he clicked his tongue in frustration.

_He would have an answer! Even if it meant having to pull out Marius’s eye teeth to get it!_

“You’ve had him.”

“Repeatedly,” the man returned, salacious and indecent to a fault, as they watched Talbot turn a corner and disappear from sight.

“You’ve had him and not turned him?”

“Perhaps turning him is not the aim,” Marius proposed, making even this sound like some sort of a lesson as his maker turned to face him - brow arched as the shadows made a mockery of his serious expression.

He made an inelegant sound in the back of his throat.

“Of course you do. Otherwise what is the point of this… _courtship?”_

The silence that greeted him seemed loaded. Enough to pique his ire and stir his temper as he spoke without thought. Feeling strangely vulnerable under his maker’s piercing gaze as he tried to take all his memories of the past half an hour and bury them deep.

“Come now Marius, you and I both know that humanity doesn’t change. The individual perhaps, given time. But the animal? The race?” he scoffed, desperate to save face, to cover his unease and confusion as the older man’s eyes seemed to pierce marrow deep.

“They are the same as they ever were. Your David included. People like him never change. What is it you said? It’s not in their nature.”

A frisson of something, some emotion he’d forgotten how to recognize shuddered through him. It prickled across his skin – ice-cold and tingling – as Marius’s fingers steepled against his breast, taking him in, wordless, as he dug himself ever deeper, unable to stop the words as they tumbled forth without censor.

“Is this some sort of punishment? Your answer for when a childe outgrows you? What is the phrase?” he hissed, ‘a replacement model?’” He regretting the words before they left his lips. But hated them both just a little bit more when Marius’s expression didn’t even so much as _twitch_.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

Neither of them even breathed.

They didn’t have to.

Then-

“Someday Lestat, you shall have to come to terms with the fact that not everything in this world revolves around you,” Marius murmured, shrugging the lines of his collar smooth as he turned back to the point where the historian had disappeared. Dark eyes fixed on the shifting crowds, yet unfocused – looking but not really seeing as the weight of at least a few dozen centuries puckered across his expression like an ill-mannered frown.

If he hadn’t known his maker as well as he did, he might not have noticed the signs. Because for once, Marius’ words were surprisingly genuine in their frustration, saying exactly what he meant without any fripperies attached. At least until the man’s tone smoothed back to its usual, patient serenity. Seeking to own the moment once more as the muggy city air hitched into the silence.

The corner of his lip quirked at the slip. _Ruffled feathers, indeed._

But, like with all things when it came to Marius, his victory was decidedly short lived.

“Besides,” Marius began, head tilting gracefully, with the air of a predator allowing some minor concession to his prey. “I believe the question you should be asking yourself is why _you_ have never felt the same.”

He stilled, brought up short as the true crux of the matter refused to be denied. His canines shivered, throat working around the beginnings of a low, rumbling growl.

“You and I both know that Jesse hasn’t gifted you with even so much as an ounce of what you experienced just now. You felt through me, a sense of completion – wholeness – that you didn’t know you had in you to feel,” the man continued, fingers flirting with the air at his sides, twitching to a harmony only he could hear.

The surety in his tone was like iron griping iron, unyielding and smugly firm.

“She is what I need,” he shot back, defensive. Comforted by the truth in them but repelled in turn by the chasm of emptiness and longing that had opened, fresh and still bleeding, in the farthest reaches of his conscious mind.

_He hadn’t realized it could be like this._

_That he could have this._

_The spark that linked his maker and Talbot together, that could be his._

_But not with Jesse. Jesse wasn’t-_

A wordless snarl pulled at the corners of his lips.

The peace he’d felt after making Jesse shattered. Even his hunger seemed almost inconsequential. He stood witness to it all as it burnt out around him. He felt, _oh god,_ he felt. His inner self, the ragged shreds of his human soul, _sang_. It was affirmation and assurance. _It was more_. Something that would rise above the pull of blood and the spanning centuries and fill that gaping hole in his chest he hadn’t realized had felt so empty. But it was also regret, grief, longing and a thousand more conflicting shards of emotion that threatened to surge up as one and consume him.

He never should have come here.

_Damn, Marius. Damn-_

“Of course, you considered turning her long before Akasha forced your hand,” Marius purred, just shy of biting as the words he left unsaid darkened the shadows with false promises and unsubtle threats. “But you’ll remember that once, you too were what _I_ needed,” Marius continued.

“But as you know,” his maker hummed, casting a hand towards the point where David had disappeared, “this is different.”

 _Mate_. The word unfurled in his mind, stretching out like a great cat, lazy and feral.

“You never told me. In all your lessons, there was nothing about this. Why?” he asked, strangely subdued as the low, throbbing bass from a nearby club rose in volume. Despite the years he remembered them all, every lesson. Just as he remembered the bitterness of the salt spray, the smell of dust, earth and fish as they haunted the shadows of coastal villages. He’d been so eager then, eager to know and learn and Marius had indulged him fiercely.

“Would your decision to turn Jesse have been any different?”

He remained silent, letting the quiet speak for him as images of that night in Maharet’s villa flashed through his mind’s eye. The flare of Marius’s coat, the dark fan of Jesse’s hair across the flagstones, Akasha’s cruel laughter, the taint of blood – ancient and young, the sprinkling of ash as one by one, the ancients burned.

He closed his eyes.

Behind his lids, the city stared back.

“I thought not.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he reminded, letting the silence breathe as Marius shifted, smoothing his palms down the length of his lapels, clearly eager to be elsewhere. It was a tell he remembered well from their lessons. He had not forgotten. Not even when he’d wanted to, in the long years after Marius had left him to his solitude. He’d hated him almost as much as he’d yearned for him.

His maker sighed, but there was little heat to it. “I believe that again, it all comes down to maturity. Even for us there is some knowledge, some personal realizations that need centuries to meld. There is a reason why we sleep, my son. Eternity means remarkably little when you spend it alone. But if it is shared? Well, that’s another thing in of itself,” the man replied, expression far-away and remarkably untroubled as he took in the city sky-line and the scents hidden within.

“…I don’t understand,” he offered finally.

He wasn’t sure what to make of it when the older vampire just smiled.

“Still so much to learn, Lestat,” Marius hummed, silk coat flaring out behind him in clear dismissal as he arched his back and fell seamlessly back to earth, disappearing off in the direction Talbot had gone with barely a ripple to the contrary.

He remained rooted in place, uncharacteristically deep in thought long after both their scents started to fade from the cracks in the cobblestones.

As always, Marius had given him much to think about.

**Author's Note:**

> Reference: Like my previous work in this fandom, the title is once again a Latin translation. ‘Exspectantes’ is the Latin word for ‘waiting’.


End file.
